Departures and Arrivals
by c1araoswa1d
Summary: (Tumblr Prompt) What if there was an AU version of Hell Bent where the Doctor has to return to the TARDIS after Clara's death to tell their child(ren)?


He could suddenly remember the scream she'd emitted, the moment that door closed behind him. That horrible tortured scream of the Quantum Shade ripping her soul, cell by cell, from her body. And he could remember how it went silent on that darkened street as she drifted away in a cloud of smoke. He could remember the dull thud of her hitting the ground, the small pop of her skull against stone before she went still, lying there before him.

He could remember the weight of her in his arms and how empty they felt as he'd walked away.

The Doctor closed his eyes as he fell against the machines that worked this hideous magic, taking her back to that end he'd stripped her away from; his hands gripping its edge as the other Time Lords in the room watched him howl through the wave of excruciating pain that rippled through his every organ, rushing out along his veins, coursing through his limbs. Like death itself, shaking his very bones.

Later they might say how they saw the great Doctor crippled by the death of a mere human. But he remembered her now and he knew: Clara Oswald would never be a _mere_ human. She would never allow herself to be categorized as such, pigeon holed amongst a population that sat beneath her. And that was why she'd gone back through that door, replaced in a finality she'd been removed from so long ago, to do what she'd always done – making sacrifices for the good of those she loved.

His smile returned then, an honest smile tinged with the sorrow that came with memories he thought he'd lost forever, filling in those deep holes in his heart that had weighed him down over the past few years. Of course he could hear every word she'd ever said to him, echoing through his mind. Of course he could see every laugh and every frown and every turn of those wide eyes. Of course he could feel the softness of her skin and the flow of her hair and the grip of her palm within his. Of course _now_. Now the universe would return those things to him.

Because now she was properly dead.

"It's what needs to happen," she'd told him, before he understood, when they were rushing through time towards a future so far away he questioned whether they'd make it at all. "Doctor, I know you don't quite recall the details, but this is my time, and I'm accepting that because I know you're only safe if I do." She'd swallowed roughly and nodded through tears, "It's the only way he'll be safe."

He'd run across the small child with the peculiarly familiar large brown eyes in a back alley where he'd parked his Tardis, and he'd followed him into an old diner, watching him glance back with a gasp before disappearing through a door at the far end. With a huff of a laugh, he'd sat calmly at the counter and tapped a bell, waiting until that door swung open again and he'd lost his breath when he'd lifted his gaze to her.

The boy, he knew immediately, was her son, and he gestured awkwardly, telling her kindly, "I'm sorry if I startled him, he looked troubled, just wanted to make sure he was alright."

She'd laughed nervously, responding as she moved around the counter, "Iain's like that, he'll be fine." Then she questioned curiously, "He wasn't being a bother to you, was he?"

Head shaking, the Doctor had stated on a laugh, "No, none at all. He took an interest in my... vehicle, it's not often it happens. She's a bit older than any little boy's interest."

She'd laughed, and it'd vibrated his hearts as she told him, "Yeah, he takes an interest in things most little boys shouldn't have an interest in – that was his father's doing, I think."

Clara, she'd said her name was. The boy's father, she'd explained, had long since forgotten them. And she'd made his milkshake and tried to send him on his way, but his Sonic detected something there. Something that emanated out from the odd woman with the electric smile; something he'd been chasing for months that her little boy had lead him straight to.

It was a ripple in time.

A ripple slowly turning into a fracture.

A fracture that would destroy the universe.

And its name, he knew now, was Clara Oswald. And her choice, he understood as he fell to the ground with a groan as his chest constricted, was to end her life to save her son's. A boy, his mind reminded, that should have been impossible, and yet, hadn't she always been? He smiled again, bowing his head and lifting his knees to lean his elbows against, the question readily on his mind: did the Time Lords know? Did the Gallifreyan High Council know of the boy who waited in an old Tardis, concealed down in the Cloisters.

Iain David Oswald. Seven Earthly years old. With two beating hearts. Who wore his mother's eyes and her shy little grin; who shared her beautiful giggle and her thirst for adventure; who was hunkered down underneath the console just like his mother had asked him to. Just after she'd held him tightly, hiding her face so he couldn't see her anguish or how broken her frozen heart felt in that moment before she let him go and ran from him so she could no longer deny the inevitable.

Holding onto him meant ending the universe.

Because she had to die.

The Doctor smiled and stood, nodding to the men and women in the room who looked to him, some with hands securely around the handles of their weapons, but he had no fight left in him that day. The hybrid, he thought to himself, it all came back to the who and the what and the how and the why of the hybrid. He walked from the room, shoulders dropping heavily, and no one followed and he was thankful for that. For the silence that accompanied him down an elevator ride and into a dusty old room it seemed like it'd been ages since he'd been in.

He wasn't the hybrid, the Doctor laughed, at least not the one in question. Neither had Lady Me been, for she'd never been a proper threat to the universe, only one of a dozen vessels, and he knew now she'd long ago sacrificed her immortality to offer up a chip that burnt itself out restoring function to Clara's body for just long enough to gestate and birth a child. The hybrid who came from two warrior races; the hybrid who could destroy the universe; the hybrid the Time Lords and the Daleks sought... was only ever _an impossible_ _love_.

Between man and woman; between mother and child.

And she'd been forced to sacrifice both times.

Touching the door to a that rusty old diner, the Doctor pushed in and made his way through its dim entrance, frowning at the Tardis that sat in mourning of her pilot. He exhaled and moved towards the console, hands digging through pockets for a set of cards that were worn and had long since lost their usefulness as her lessons had embedded themselves in his hearts. A tender touch from a hand that had been scratched from his memory for far too long.

He lifted a set of slender fingers to the handle of that back door, curling them around it warmly, and he took a long breath, knowing _her_ eyes waited inside for an explanation he wasn't quite ready to offer. And when he finally stood there, watching that small child creep out from his hiding place, he merely watched him a moment as he came to a stop several feet away, studying the look on his face. And the Doctor took him in then with new eyes, seeing not just the woman he'd walked to her death, but the other side of the child he'd been blocked by the universe from seeing.

The soft brown waves of hair that framed his long face. The delicate fingers that clenched and unclenched tightly at his sides. The thick lowered brows that began to challenge him angrily. The little dark jacket that Clara had draped over his burgundy hooded sweatshirt... _his son_.

"Where's mummy?" Iain demanded, light voice betraying the antagonism he wished to convey.

Cards held in his hand, the Doctor sifted through them, reading aloud, "I'm very sorry for your loss..." _I'll do all I can to solve the death of your friend slash family member slash pet._ He looked to the boy.

His lips were trembling and slowly, one hand lifted to touch at his chest, telling him quietly and honestly, "My hearts can't feel her anymore." Then he pleaded, "Where has she gone?"

Tossing the cards aside, the Doctor knelt roughly and he beckoned the boy over, letting his eyes spill over as he reached for his little hand, lifting it to own chest to ask, "Iain, do you feel these hearts," he watched him nod slowly as he cried. "They're like your hearts in so many ways." The Doctor swallowed roughly, admitting, "They were filled with so much love for your mother, love I couldn't remember until a few moments ago, and now I'm afraid they've gone empty."

Iain's head tiled forward and he stepped into the Doctor, dropping onto him with a sob. His whole tiny body shook with his tears and the Doctor wrapped his arms around him, holding him securely, and silently crying with him. He inhaled the scent of him, the cleanness of clothes and the light whiff of a peanut butter sandwich he'd eaten earlier, and the faintest remnants of Clara's perfume.

"Iain, it's alright to be sad," he told him, "But your mother would want us to be strong."

He peeled himself up, hands gripping into the Doctor's shoulders as he cried in response, "She said I was different, that I was special, and that she had to keep me safe from terrible things. Who's going to keep me safe from those things now, Doctor?"

Reaching up, the Doctor took his hands and brought them back down upon his two hearts, watching Iain's small face look to those spots in so much pain. "You and I are quite the same, you can feel that, can't you, Iain."

He nodded slowly.

The Doctor explained, "Your mother travelled with me for many years before you were born. In fact, you were conceived in that time, in her womb when she was taken from me, frozen there until she and an old friend worked out just how to bring you into this world."

"I'm not supposed to be here," he whimpered. "I was supposed to die with her."

He felt the pressure in those small palms laid flat against his chest subside, replaced by a curious shifting of his fingers as the Doctor smiled. "She told me a secret, a long time ago in this very place. I had forgotten it, or rather, I had hidden it away in the back of my mind and now it's come back to me – would you like me to tell you what it was?"

Iain nodded and inched forward, his hands now drifting up to hold the sides of the Doctor's neck, finding some comfort in the skin there. He imagined he'd spoken with his mother a thousand times in very much the same way, and he sighed at the thought, wishing he'd seen him through the years as he'd grown from that newborn to this boy.

"She told me she loved me, more than she knew love could exist, and she told me she wished it were all different then, because she'd just found out about you." He smiled, "It pained her, thinking she would never hold you in her arms, or see your beautiful face, and so we ran. We ran to the end of the universe in hopes we could save you and I devised a plan. Perhaps if I could erase her memories of you, and her memories of me, and the memories of knowing she had to die to keep this universe spinning, it could buy me time to save us all."

"What happened?" Iain asked quietly.

"Things never quite go as planned, and I was the one who forgot." He bowed his head before feeling Iain's hands lift his cheeks, nodding at him to continue – so very much like his mother would have – and so he finished, "She saved us, Iain. She loved us more with her one heart than we could ever know with two, and she did what no one else could: she gave us the universe, and she gave us each other."

The boy stared into him curiously a moment and the Doctor felt his fingers crawl up, pressing into his temples before he closed his eyes for a quiet snap of a second. A second in which Clara's life swam before his eyes, every memory of her folding and blending and bursting to the forefront of his mind and, he knew, to her son's.

His eyes popped open, and he took several labored breaths before whispering, "Daddy?"

Nodding with a half-smile, the Doctor asked in a hushed voice, "Will you come away with me?"

And the boy nodded quickly, hissing a simple, "Yes."


End file.
